Misuse of academic metrics!

To briefly summarize, this note says that the scientific metric such as IF (impact Factor) is/was not intended for measuring a scientist but it is only a measure of academic journal. This note also warns about the destructive misuses of academic metrics.

Although I completely agree with those comments, what is the solution then? We all have heard the same story from leading scientists mentioning that we should not do this or that. However, I did not come across any solution offered by these experts. Assume you are in a hiring committee, and there are 200 applicants (which is relatively low). What would you do in order to establish who is the best? Even reading the applicant files, with current measure, would take weeks. Without those metric, what is the other option?

I believe that the problem with metric arises not because other people do not understand that those metric are useless, but since they are THE ONLY practical measures. In my opinion, we need to reduce the total number of applicants! That means North America, should stop its PhD making factory. The total number of job positions (academic and industry) per area should be around the same number of PhD graduates, i.e., around the same number of PhD students admitted per year.

University in the present form are like inconsiderate parents, who make a lot of childs per year and has no time; first to make sure every child gets enough care, second to make sure that every child will end up somewhere decent (left aside a happy life).